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29 November 2013

Given the fact that the holidays are now upon us, it seems only right that I should rehash the benefits of alcohol consumption on the strength athlete, since everyone's going to be fucked-in-half drunk for the bulk of the next month. As I posited previously, it's going to happen whether or not you believe it will have a positive impact on your gains, as extreme risk takers are prone to bouts of binge drinking. Beyond that though, there are plenty of reasons why drinking's not the enemy to gainz in the way Jeff Foxworthy is an enemy to comedy you might still think it is.

Good strength athletes are, by and large, risk-taking attention seekers who live in a world where maintenance of the status quo is as unthinkable as running a 24 hour brothel and meth lab out of their parents' basement . Compounding this is the all-American work-yourself-around-the-fucking-clock ethic, to which people who are extremely competitive are even more susceptible to driving themselves to the brink (or in my case, far enough past it I might start bottling my own urine soon) of insanity. Psychologists have an explanation for why, then, people of our ilk like to get fucked-in-half drunk or high as shit on a semi-regular basis:

"[The elite] are expected to work hard year round. Even play is work – camp is for honing athletic skills, losing weight, learning to write or make movies – that is, almost anything but just plain fun. So no wonder that by the time they get to college, adolescents are anxious, depressed and stressed out. How do they deal with these feelings? They work hard at what they see as relaxation – like binge drinking. Ask any of these youngsters, and they will tell you they are trying to get drunk because it’s the best way they know to have fun. They are working at playing the way they have learned to work at living" (Barth).

Given that analysis, it stands to reason that people who kills the fucking weights 6 days a week, sometimes multiple times a day, might need the occasional evening of watching tentacle rape hentai with their underwear on their head while fucked up on vicodin and vodka. It's not as though people who are constantly killing themselves at self-improvement would ratchet down the intensity whatsoever when they're trying to relax- it's not possible. Being brutal is wired into the self-conscious just as not masturbating and white knighting chicks on internet message boards is wired into the psyche of every dude under the age of 27 who's at a bodyweight of 150 lbs or less.

Having established that it's natural, one might wonder what effect it might have on their gainz. As I covered in the last installment, the effect on training, if training is the only factor at issue, is likely negligible. That's not to say it has no effect or a negative effect on the rest of you, however. Studies have shown that "moderate drinkers have a more favorable self-perception of their health status than either abstainers or heavy drinkers"(Brodsky), "more experienced drinkers were more specifically focused on enhanced sexual and aggressive arousal"(Ibid), and that drinkers of vodka in particular become far more sociable (Darkes, Goldman). If you're not getting how that translates to lifting, it means you're going to be more aggressive, happier, and leaner because you're getting laid, like yourself more, and generally be more awesome than you were before. If you can't muddle through how that might help your lifting, you might just want to stop reading and throw yourself down a well.

Quad growth might suffer.

Ah, but you might have caught on that the greatest benefits of drinking come when you're a "moderate" drinker. A cursory search of psychological journals puts "moderate" drinking at 2.5 to 5 drinks per day, depending on the source, which means you get between 17 and 35 drinks a week to remain moderate. That's a hell of a lot of shots, in my book, and is the perfect segue to the crux of this post- getting fucked up post workout brings the gainz. Scientists recently discovered, and I am not making this up, that consuming a drink containing grain alcohol (like Tucker Max's "Tucker Death Mix") raised both free and total testosterone for five hours post workout, whereas those who did not consume the frat boy rapist punch had their test levels fall below baseline. Happily, the alcohol had no effect on cortisol or estradiol levels, so the dudes in the study were just floating in a sea of dying brain cells and testosterone-fueled awesomeness (Vingren).

How much is enough to get the nearly 100% boost in testosterone postworkout science has recorded? It depends on your bodyweight. For matters of convenience and exigency, I decided to make a little chart for you guys to give you the proper dosage to spike your test levels properly using the study's 1.09mg/kg bodyweight ratio organized by weight class, as this is after all an article aimed at serious lifters. For the Oly guys and IPF/USAPL (/sadfaceissad) among you, these are the weight classes that existed before the IOC decided that you guys couldn't hang with the old school lifters.

How the fucking guys in the study made it home is a mystery- they sure as hell didn't drive, and if they did, they didn't live, because they slammed that shit in 10 minutes. I can drink with the best of them, but I've never faced half a liter of vodka in ten minutes- that's some Decline of Western Civilization style drinking, and I'm not sure I can hang with the likes of 1980s hair metal bands.

Bring tha gainz.

In other words, here is your plan for the holidays- whenever you're planning to party, smash the fuck out of some weights, slam a shake, and then drink yourself into a coma. According to science, you'll awaken with a steel hardon (and who doesn't get horny as fuck when hungover?), muscle gain, fat loss, and an appreciation for what Peter The Great's life must have been like before he died of a gangrenous bladder.

Dude literally made people take a shot every 15 minutes at his parties and would punch them in the face if they remained sober.

20 November 2013

Sun Tzu, a long dead Chinaman with a penchant for murdering hookers and writing books to which still yuppies jack off, had a portion of his seminal work The Art of War in which he addressed the proper response to three basic situations in which one might find themselves:

Though this might seem a bit cryptic, if yuppies can apply this to business, than those of us with the "meathead condition" certainly can apply it to our own lives. Should you find yourself unable to do so, you're likely to be capable of counting only to potato. In spite of that fact, I shall elucidate the meaning of my metaphor- one will find themselves encountering a number of setbacks in training, dieting, and competition, and all of those require slightly different responses. Though it's easy to forget the value of setbacks and injuries, they are actually one of the few things that will keep you progressing forward rather than lapsing into complacency and whatever other training malaise with which you might find yourself afflicted. Yes, that's correct- it is actually a good thing to plateau and get injured, all of the plaintive missives of the whiny bitches populating the interwebz notwithstanding. If one never encounters setbacks, they will never find a way to overcome them. Hilariously, the first impulse of most people is to consult with others to find a solution to their problem, as they're too fucking lazy and stupid to do it themselves.

This might be you.

It might surprise the assembled internet warriors that I never had a significant training injury until I broke a bone in my right hand and tore my left bicep in the Olympia last month. That's right- I broke a bone in my right hand because I drove the bar so hard into the ground after pulling the easiest 606 in history and then tore my bicep on my second attempt with 675. As to the former injury, there were parties at the Olympia to which I was trying to prove a point, and as I am not really a fan of the deadlift anyway, proved the efficacy of my ridiculous non-deadlifting training techniques by slamming the bar to the ground and walking away from it contemptuously. What sucked about the injuries, however, moreso than the injuries themselves, was the fact that they crippled my upper body training for about a month and left me flailing about trying to determine just what in the fuck I should be doing to keep moving forward, as I'd had my sights set on a ~1800 total at RUM and was damned if I'd see that dream go entirely up in smoke just because I participated in a meet I shouldn't have. This brought on a rather uncommon bit of introspection, and that led to the following missive on the incredible value of training setbacks. In keeping with Sun Tzu, I've divided training setbacks into three distinct categories and will outline the strategies I've used to circumvent them.

Given that Chun Li is Chinese, one would think there'd be cosplay porn with a Chinese broad it in, but it's naught but Japanese and Americans. That's almost as weird as the amount of 'shopping done to this pic.

Mountain forests, Or simply "forests", rugged steppes, marshes and fens—all country that is hard to traverse: this is difficult ground.

Everyone has the occasional training setback. It could be due to a chronic, nagging pain that you can't shake, weirdness in your personal life, midnight rape by closet golems, on any other of a thousand reasons. These are without question the easiest of the three "fuck My Life" categories I've enumerated above to resolve, as it simply requires that you identify the culprit and destroy it. Closet golems fucking up your colon nightly? Burn your house down. Significant other acting like an asshole all the time and stressing you out? Kick that motherfucker off the top of a tall building. Have a niggling "injury" hampering your training? Get deep tissue massage. If I had a nickel for every time someone came to me with an "injury" that was either immediately or almost immediately resolved by Rolfing, I'd have a bunch of nickels.

Goddamned closet golems.

I first stumbled upon this realization when I was trying to diagnose what I thought was a rotator cuff injury. After a corstisone injection had the same effect on my pain that Kevin Smith has on the average female's vaginal humidity, I started poking around in my armpit to see if I could feel an issue. What I discovered was a whole fucking pile of issues in the form of nested knots in my bicep, all of which proved extremely painful and difficult to root out, but were definitively the source of my pain. Likewise, I discovered that my knee pain was caused by tight IT bands and/or weak hamstrings, and massage again came to the rescue for that.

If the owner of this crap squats over 315 I will eat my fucking laptop.

If there is nothing in your non-training life apparently fucking with your training, you either need to try something new in the gym or try harder. The former bit would hopefully occur to most of you, but the latter bit is a concept completely lost on people under the age of 25. It seems like everyone under 25 has grown up in an environment wherein just showing up means they get some kind of award, and whereas it was the high school kids who were the go-hards, back in the day, it's the old heads running circles around the kids with abacuses and notepads and Elite EFS gear and rumble rollers and PVC pipes and bands and bells and straps and every other retarded training accouterments one might wish for. Half of these kids seem to think the key to a big bench is carrying 75 lbs of random lifting detritus into the gym in a bag bigger than they are. Oh, and per-workout nutrition. Instead, they just might want to look at the old guys and lift like they do- fucking HARD.

Ground which is reached through narrow gorges, and from which we can only retire by tortuous paths, so that a small number of the enemy would suffice to crush a large body of our men: this is hemmed in ground.

When you're hemmed in, you're basically either suffering from moderate training injuries or long plateaus. The former can be trained around, to an extent. For instance, I tried to roll through an ankle bar years ago and managed to get myself an avulsion fracture of my right ankle in the process. Docs gave me a low cast, and I promptly hobbled my ass into the gym and started squatting on it the following week. This was not a walking cast- this was a regular, rounded cast. I was going to be damned if I was going to see my squat drop simply because my ankle decided to fail me, and I continued lifting as usual. Similar injuries would be broken fingers/toes, or pulled muscles in your extremities. All of that can be trained and/or trained around. What you want to avoid is making the injury worse with your training, which seems to be one of the only two options I see assholes on Facebook taking... either they continue training in the exact same manner that got them the injury and fuck themselves up worse of they just stop training. One's stupid and the other is stupid and weak. Try not to be either.

BUT THE INTERNET TOLD ME THE LENIN-BREZHNEV 5/3/1 HYBRID WOULD PUT 48.23 OUNCES ON MY SQUAT EVERY DAY IF I INCREASED THE WEIGHT BY 12.936% WHEN THE MOON WAS FULL!!!!

Instead of doing the same old shit or nothing whatsoever, forcibly drag yourself out of whatever box-named-after-a-dead-Russian you're in and fucking do different shit. Look around your gym- there are thousands of pound of equipment at your disposal, and you can use ALL of it. Stop being a pompous ass who thinks that his/her MASSIVE 315 squat affords you the right to talk shit about the bodybuilders hammering away on machines all day long. I've seen those cats enter powerlifting meets, and the results are hilarious. In a meet a couple of years ago I saw a 200 lb kid pull 700 in a meet, and it was the second time he'd done the fucking lift. He was just really used to lifting really heavy shit at a variety of angles, and happened to have a some sort of superhuman monkey grip. The second you lock yourself into a mindset is the second you consign yourself to failure.

Same goes for a long plateau- you're doing the wrong shit. Even the most perfectly designed program can fail miserably if you hate it, don't have the mindset to do it with the proper amount of vim and vigor, or you have to cut corners to make it work for you. Time and time again I've seen lifters beat their faces on the wall like psychotic retards in an attempt to force a themselves to succeed on a program for which they're unsuited. that's not you failing on a program, that's the fucking program failing you, because it wasn't designed for you. The sooner everyone gets this fucking message the better, because the topic is literally going to give me a fucking ulcer at some point. Cookie cutter programs are for cookie cutter people- leave them to the gingerbread men and women of the world and use your fucking brain to determine what's best for you. And before the beginners of the world chime in with bullshit about how they're incapable of thinking for themselves, SHUT THE FUCK UP. No one wants to hear that bitch made drivel, because it's fucking stupid. There are Special Olympians who outlift you, and it's not like they've thought their way into beast mode- they just see a fucking weight and pick it up, put it down, and repeat. This shit could not be more simple.

Still at a loss? Frankly, I think getting past plateaus couldn't be more intuitive, but I am also a genius who's been training for more years than most of the people reading this have not been not not shitting their pants. While you try to figure out that triple negative, I will related what Mel Siff suggests for ramping right the fuck over a plateau like you're a soccer mom in a Hummer texting about some inane television show while she's plowing down mailboxes on the way to pick up little Suzie from ballet practice.

Attempt to increase the number of repetitions with near maximal loads. This is one of my favorite methods, in fact, and I use it pretty much constantly. To do this, you essentially focus on making your rep max for a certain rep max higher in reps, i.e. taking a 2 rep max to a 3 rep max. That generally works wonders, and once you've increased by two reps, you can usually move 10-20 lbs more on your previous rep max.

Increase loads by unfamiliar increments. According to Siff, "sticking points often relate to the numerical value of the load that associates with one’s current 1RM. For example, if you are trying to increase your 1RM of 100kg via succession of sets of 80-90-95-100kg, the sequence could be changed to sets of 80-92.5-97.5-102.5kg." In my experience, that sort of a sticking point is usually about as mental as it is physical, so either tricking yourself into lifting just above or just below the weight with kilos or pounds, depending on what's unfamiliar to you, having your lifting partner change the training weights on you without you noticing (a la Arnold with Franco back in the day), or just jumping right over your sticking point weight by five lbs and having a spotter handy to help you out if it ends up a catastrophe.

Add minimal weights increments near your attempts with your 1RM. Siff says, "Very light weights (0.5-1.0kg) will be virtually unnoticeable. You should simply continue to train as if the small increment was not there." That's all well and good, but I've never found that microplates help for shit. Maybe it's my impatience, and maybe it's just my desire to impose my will on the world, but I don't think involving microplates in your program does much more than indicate the possibility of a micropenis.

Alter or improve technique in problematic exercises. Master trainer Siff thinks that plateaus are occasionally due to imperfect technique, and that the use of a coach or a self-conducted (read NOT A FUCKING FORM CHECK VIDEO) can lend itself to a solution. Again, I've benefited not at all from the suggestions of other people when it comes to determining whether or not my form can be improved, because there are precious few people on the planet with the requisite experience and knowledge to provide such an analysis. Most of the people who are happy to contribute form advice are either pompous beyond any reasonable understanding of how self-confidence is formed, or too stupid to understand they're talking our of their asses. Either way, you're better off looking for weak spots on your own if you cannot find a competent coach.

My approach to plateaus has been somewhat different. Instead of using microplates or sitting down with a bowl of popcorn to watch the fascinating evolution of my squat, I (surprise, surprise) black glass that plateau like it's a xenomorph-infested planet by doing the following:

Alter the exercise. If I am stalled on the bench press, for instance, I will either alter the manner in which I conduct it altogether for a time, or I'll change the second day exercise altogether and change the rep range on the first. I always do major lifts twice a week at a minimum, so I will either change my primary lift from a full back squat to a bottom position back squat, for instance, or change my supplementary second day from something like a front squat to a jump squat, then monkey with the rep range on the heavy first day slightly. I'm not talking about going from singles to tens, I'm talking about going from singles to triples, or from triples to fives.

Alter the arrangement of your exercises. This could be within a day or within a week. Either way, you want to shift your priority to the very beginning of your training week to ensure you're at your freshest when you attempt it.

Replace the stalled exercise with a similar exercise. I've done this with both the bench and the squat to get them moving again. In the former case I replaced it with reverse grip incline bench press, and with the latter I replaced it with the front squat, but kept all other parameters (loading, reps, etc) the same.

Yeah, it really is that simple. Up next, we'll have the death ground bit- what to do when the universe up and fucks you to bits and you have to train through injury and illness. To all those of you who are going to ask me about hernias, please do me a favor and kill yourselves.

16 November 2013

When I was wrapping up the end of the last blog in this series, I knew I had left a bunch of shit out that I really wanted to get in, but figured I'd hold off a bit before hammering you guys with more of this stuff. Alas, I can wait no longer, so here we go. First of, I figured I'd fill you guys in on what is going on with Chaos and Pain LLC. As most of you should already know, Cannibal Ferox and Inferno are both available for purchase over at www.chaosandpain.com. We had innumerable problems with the Ferox, however, and so we've found an alternate vendor for production. As such, we'r going to be launching two new products next month"

Cannibal Genius. Genius is a nootropic blend combining 40mg of noopept with a variety of other, complementary traditional nootropics and acacia rigidula for a bit of pep in your step. Time to ditch your amphetamines, because I've got that shit chumped with this fomula.

Cannibal Swole. Swole is a no-stim pump product designed to be used along or in concert with Cannibal Ferox. Frankly, I hate pump products, but I can guarantee this shit will give you a pump like you've never had before. Go here and vote for which flavor you want us to make first!

With all of that corporate shit out of the way, here are a bunch of bands, books, and movies that are guaranteed to scare off any Jehovah's Witnesses that might come calling this holiday season.

Music

Suicide Silence- The Black CrownThough I liked their EP and one of Suicide Silence's songs off their first album (and I think everyone can agree that you really can't not dislike No Pity For A Coward), I found them to generally be somewhat uninspiring on the whole. To make matters worse, their second album blew, and they supported it by touring Not so with their third album, which I just discovered simply because I wanted to see what all the hullabaloo was with replacing their original singer. When MetalSucks gets excited enough to post a four second clip of the band jamming with their new singer, there has to be something to the band. The Black Crown is that something. Suicide Silence was, in my opinion, basically nu-metal repackaged as deathcore, but on this album they basically appear to have listened to Hatebreeed's Satisfaction is the Death of Desire, taken the hardcore sentiments therein, and slapped a thick, brutal layer of deathcore on top. What you end up with is some of the best fucking lifting music I've found since Annotations of an Autopsy's last EP. Not only that, but the album's diverse enough to suit whichever mood you might have when you're in the gym, be it the "fuck yeah I'm gonna lift some weights and fuck some sluts because I rule" or "I'm gonna smash every weight on Earth and burn this motherfucker to the ground when I'm done". It makes about as much sense as Robin Thicke's continued existence to attempt to draw a comparison between Suicide Silence and Bulldoze, but SS is pretty much a repackaged Bulldoze for the new century- sometimes they bring the Beatdown and sometimes they remind you to Remember Who's Strong. For the metal snobs among you, give it this song at least 25 seconds, and bear in mind (Crom help us) that it has a fucking guitar solo in it.

Last Ten Seconds Of Life- Know Your Exits and Invivo[Exvivo]At some point in 2008 or 2009, I was the sole white person living in a ghetto as fuck apartment complex I moved into sight unseen. Around that time, I picked up Last Ten Seconds Of Life, and that album blasting out of my apartment and the occasional shirtless foray into the parking lot brandishing two sets of knucks and one or two bashed out car windows were the only thing that kept the fucking crack-dealing shitbirds from "gaffling" each other in front of my fucking window. As such, I practically shit my pants when I stumbled on their newest full length and EP, as they're both better than a K9 cop for getting gangbangers to scatter like roaches and make for an awesome soundtrack to a particularly hate-filled training session. I don't think I need to sell this band any more that. Beatdown deathcore so brutal it makes gangbangers pull up their fucking pants and pretend to read books.

Nails- Abandon All LifeLike most people (I assume, as I don't know all that many people), I go through very distinct phases with my music. I'll go through a deathcore phase, a beatdown phase, a dubstep phase, and on occasion, a grindcore/powerviolence/old school hardcore phase. You might find the latter category a bit odd, as few people would lump those three genres together, but it's my contention that what is now either characterized as grindcore or powerviolence is nothing more than the natural evolution of old school hardcore. We're not talking early 90s hardcore- we're talking Bad Brains/Minor Threat/SS Decontrol style hardcore. the kin of shit that was fast, angry, and technically proficient without being noodly. All Nails did was add better distortion and make the shit way, way, way fucking meaner. The result? Fucking stab-your-mother-in-law-with-a-rusty-screwdriver-at-Christmas-dinner-for-her-awful-reindeer-sweater amazing.

Kublai Khan- Youth WarThis is for those of you who appreciate my more unhoned tastes. Kublai Khan's not a glass of red at the end of a long working day- it's a quadrupal shot of bum liquor at lunch you can't shake off. It's the chick you fucked but didn't really think was hot who keeps coming back to ruin your other romantic entanglements because she's just that much of a dirty bitch and you can't keep your dick out of her. In other words, Kublia Khan is all that is good in life, with none of the guilt. If you like Thy Art Is Murder, you're going to love Kublai Khan more than chubby, pasty, middle aged white guys with mustaches like the feeling of the inside of a young boy's anus.

Madchild- Lawnmower ManWhat? Rap? Why? Well, I'll fucking tell you why. Madchild is a former member of the group Swollen Members, he combines nerdcore and horrorcore rap, and his beats are fucking sick. If you don't like either of those genres, you're likely a card carrying communist who only listens to patriotic marching music and old Propagandhi records... on vinyl, of course. When you've got lyrics like this, you can only go wrong if you only take lefts when everywhere you have to go is on the right.

"Cocaine and steroids, I don't get paranoid

You are not a gangster, you're a fuckin errand boy

Werewolf, warlord, poet and a warrior

Mad Child king, Vancouver and Victoria

These kids forfeit against war orphans

I kill often, I fill coffins

Life's still awful, I will profit

Mad shine bright like light in a socket"

Books Of Which Baphomet Would Approve

Hogg by Samuel DelanyThough I highly doubt any of you will ever read this, I thought I'd put it on your radar only because this book was so fucked up it literally took me three years to finish it. The protagonist, Hogg, is a contract rapist (yeah, people pay him and his gang to rape broads and dudes) who drags a 12 year old semi-sex-slave boy with him to participate in the festivities while he crosses the countryside raping, maiming, and killing a variety of people. If nothing else, it's worth reading just because you can say you did afterwards.

Vampires Overhead by Alan HyderI admit it- I generally loathe vampire books. Anne Rice, Twilight, etc, are all garbage in my book. To wit, the idea of a ravenous, blood thirsty semi-cannibal as a sexy creature of the night is simply a ridiculous subject for a book and generally ludicrous idea overall. This novel, however, written by a guy who's basically an unknown pulp writer from the 30's and takes vampires in an entirely different direction. The vampires in this book are sort of alien fire bats descend upon an unsuspecting Earth in hordes, draining every drop of moisture from people while setting everything ablaze. As such, Vampires Overhead is really more post-apocalypse than vampire novel as the vampires are totally alien creatures. If you're looking for weak soft-core porn involving pasty faced Victorian-era Eastern Europeans, look elsewhere, but if you want a great account of a fanciful apocalypse, definitely give this a read.

Invasion by Eric L. HarryIt's been a few years since I've read any of Eric L. Harry, but back in the day this guy was the king of the intelligent World War III novel. This was perhaps the best of the bunch, in which China invades the US by sea and we have to fight back to push those fuckers into the ocean. the tech in the book is believable if not currently extant, and the characters keep the story flowing. If you, like me, like a good WW3 yearn, this one will sate your appetite, as they're not really getting written much anymore.

Coming soon, more of the hormone series and a bit on how I have been training since my injury. Keep it classy, motherfuckers.

10 November 2013

DISCLAIMER: You demanded it, so you're getting it. Behold a heavily edited version of my original rant against strength coaches. I doubt this will make sense to anyone, but worst case you'll laugh your ass off because I am obviously mentally unbalanced.

In spite of displaying more conceit than you'd likely see out of college sorority girl who's spent more money on plastic surgery in a year than most people spend on their first home, I required a small amount of external motivation to achieve the proper mindset to pull 606 and 672 easily as hell. That motivation didn't come from a person or a chemical, but rather in the form of the song containing the lyrics I've got in the first image in this article. That song, which has facilitated every PR since RUM, it is the hardest, angriest, most hateful, bile-spitting, life-destroying, soul-crushing, death-defying, fetus-aborting, friendship-ruining, life-affirming fucking song in the history of written music.

Beethoven would have wept at the brutal simplicity of this song, and at the cutting edge of its message. This song, Posi Holocaust, is my life's anthem... it defines me in ways I could not with my own words. As ridiculous as this might sound, this song resonates so hard with me I will not listen to it unless I am attempting a max single because it fills me with so much rage and bile I can't be around the Normies who populate the everyday world.

Onto the subject at hand- the thing that's been burning a fucking hole in my gut like I swallowed a mouthful of magma with the belief I could channel the power of a volcano if I did so. I've not, as I realize I needn't injest toxic and fatally hot magma to erupt like Mt. Vesuvius and lay waste to everything in my path. What lies in my path, then, are strength coaches. Yes, strength coaches- innocuous, banal, seemingly irrelevant people of whom there is such a surfeit on the internet that naming them hardly seems necessary and would take more time than makes sense. Lest you wonder, I hardly consider myself a coach. I'm more of a consultant. I identify problems, provide solutions, give a lifters a direction and shove him that way. Just as I do not fancy myself a coach, I do not believe I am responsible for the results gained from the programs I provide or the fixes I relate, any more than a mechanic takes credit for the fact that a nearly new AMG Merc smokes a BMW M3 off the line. I simply facilitate, and take no responsibility for the results- the results lie solely in the hands of the people for whom I provide guidance.

Your average "strength coach" in build and utility.

Of late, I've seen any number of coaches taking credit for the actions of the lifters in their stable. I'm not talking about guys like Glenn Pendlay, who've earned the right but would sooner take credit for the invention of the internet than Tom Sroka's overhead press numbers, but guys few people know about and whom the world ultimately would not care if they immediately ceased to be. They like to claim responsibility for the feats of the lifters "under" them, in spite of the fact that the lifter is the person who did all the fucking work. This, I feel, is part of a greater phenomena whereby people believe that if they talk about something enough, they have done it. That mentality, however pervasive, insidious, disgusting, pathetic, worthless, shameful, and ignoble as it may be, needs to be rectified with nothing less than a hefty dose of cyanide and probably better with a neutron bomb.

You picked the weights for a lifter who broke a world record? Congratulations. You're a good fucking guesser. You did NOTHING. NOTHING AT ALL. Not only are you so fucking worthless your parents likely weep themselves to sleep at night with the knowledge they produced a pompous dipshit who'd be better off beating himself to death with a claw hammer than offering other people advice, but you're detracting from the efforts of a lifter far better than you. FAR. BETTER. THAN. YOU.

I live alone. I train alone. I'll win the title alone.

If you don't recognize that quote, it doesn't surprise me at all. It's Clubber Lang from Rocky III declaring he needs no one. No matter how much you think to the fucking contrary, your lifters need you that much. The best you can do is point out shit they're doing wrong- you're not responsible for their success. Fuck me running, you're more responsible for the stranger's cum running down the inside of your girl's thigh than you are for your "lifters" success. That's right- if you're so delusional you're taking credit for the lifts of your "lifters", I've likely cum on her cervix while you were in the bathroom at a meet. If I didn't, someone else did, because we can smell weakness and you smell fucking weak. We're not talking about my "share and share alike" ,mentality with my girls, either- we're talking about a chick who fucks the nearest male the second you turn your back because you're a shit-talking pussy who deserves to lose his girl to a better man.

If you are a coach and you're going to absurdly claim responsibility for your lifters' success, guess what, fuckface? YOU'RE ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR FAILURES. They didn't listen? Fuck you, you should have yelled louder. They had a bad day? Fuck you, you're there to make it better. They missed weight? Fuck you, you're a dogshit coach and should down yourself in a seedy porn shop's toilet. And sweet Jesus, if you are a coach who either hamstrings your lifters' progress by instilling them with the idea that they're less than they are, or YOU SUGGEST THEY SKIP AN ATTEMPT IN A MEET AND THEY'RE NOT GRAVELY INJURED, do us all a fucking favor and jump in front of a bus. A bus covered with AIDS. And cholera. Preferably one with a spiked cowcatcher on the front just to insure that you'll be maimed badly and die a slow fucking death in a shitty third world hospital or something. The next bitch who tells me that they skipped a fucking attempt at a meet and wasn't crippled with injury or illness is going to swallow a mouthful of his fucking teeth. If you're going to be that weak, dickless, spineless, and pathetic, keep that shit the fuck out of my corner- I don't need any fucking has been's or never-gonna-be's fucking with my mojo.

Witches be crazy.

This is a sport of people who are so insecure, and so bitch-made, they can't take responsibility for a fucking thing themselves. If they lose, they claim it was witchcraft, the other guy's gear, their coach's falult, their parents didn't love them, they are a compulsive masturbator because their parents didn't love them enough/too much/too helicoptery. As such, I can't really blame the coaches too fucking much because they're really just a symptom of a greater problem.

"Force and might makes right. Perhaps things shouldn’t be that way but that's the way they are. I learned to look with suspicion and hatred on everybody. As the years went on that idea persisted in my mind above all others. I figured that if I was strong enough and clever enough to impose my will on others, I was right. I still believe that to this day."

- Carl Panzram

It's not just coaches who spew their vile weakness all over the fucking internet and the platform. Practically every Facebook status update I read is a paean to being a pathetic bitch. Feel like airing your dirty laundry and your emotions on the fucking internet? DON'T. No one gives a flying fuck. If anyone did care, you'd likely be able to And for those of you who will claim they do, you're the bitch-made pussies spouting that passive aggressive bullshit in the first fucking place. Oh, and don't even get me started on the clever little not-so-cryptic, look-at-me-and-feel-sorry bullshit, weak sauce status updates begging for attention and a faux-Mongol horde of white knights to roll in and gently stroke your inner child's engorged clitorises when you post something like:

"Ever have one of those day where everything bothers you from the minute you awake? Today's one of those days."

"I'm done tired of the fights n the bs of u keepin secrets I dont wanna hurt n e more I hope you find happiness Ima stay bein single u can go do u n ima do me its betta dis way 4 both of us u kno its tru" [Sic. To the whole fucking thing and I hope they see me making fun of them and open up some veins. Remember, it's down the road, not across the street, you fucking waterhead.]

"It's so easy to make me happy and yet it's not... ponder that one for a moment."

I read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day when I was a little kid too, and you know what the moral of the fucking book is? SUCK IT THE FUCK UP, BITCH.

Unmerciful. Callous. Relentless.

It's mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality.

Our entire fucking sport, and the internet at large, is crowded with pompous bitches who think their opinion is worth hearing, in spite of the fact that they're too stupid to clearly articulate their thoughts, it's highly likely that their parents don't even fucking like them, they've never had an original idea in their lives, and they're too poorly educated to provide a logical basis for the bullshit they smear all over the internet like a four year old retard fingerpainting on the wall with their own feces. Special snowflake syndrome is so fucking out of hand at this point that everyone thinks they deserve some sort of award for showing up, even when they've participated half-assedly in a sport they should have never even recognized as such. Who the fuck wants to sit through 45 minutes of handing out an goddamn trophy to every participant? Fuck- I usually skip those things and head to the bar. I'll pick up my cash later and you can keep the dumbass trophy. Oh, forgive me- I'm being disrespectful to the sport again. I might slam a bar like a fucking boss and upset someone's inner infant.

LIKE. A. BOSS.

I am the best, and I live alone, I train alone, and I will continue to win titles, alone. I need no one and require no help from anyone. When I first started competing, I didn't even wear a belt, just to prove I literally needed nothing to dominate my competition. No handlers, no advice, no support structure, no belt, nothing. All I need is me, and to be fucking consistent and fucking brutal. I'm not fucking magical. No sorcerers were involved in the production of my program. Not because I have the best training scheme ever invented- but because I do what I want, when I want, and don't fucking listen to nonsense to the contrary. Nor am I alone in this. Most people need a coach like they need a hole in the head, and they need a "program" like they need an asshole on their elbow. Instead, what they need is to nut the fuck up, quit bitching on Facebook, and lift some heavy goddamn weights until they shit blood and weep five times distilled vodka, sweat 500 mg/cc testosterone and piss growth hormone.

All those I rely on: NO ONE

Those things I depend on: NOTHING

My survival lies in my own strength

It’s power through control

Control through strength

Strength through hate

Hate through fear

Fear through displays of power

Nut the fuck up. Or don't. I honestly don't give a shit. I will just continue to sit up on high and cast down my judgements like thunderbolts from the heavens. If you're going to pretend to halfway give a shit, try to be as awesome as the picture above.

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